It’s The History Of Retail In 100 Objects post – This weeks object is The Chain Store

The origins of modern chain store retailing date back several millennia to ancient China. Merchants in China and later Japan recognised there were advantages to centralised management and selling through multiple distribution points which to day serve as the defining characteristics of chain store retailing. Chain stores emerged in North America in the 1700s when the Hudson’s Bay Company created a network of branded trading posts. However, it wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that the chain store approach to retail gained momentum in Europe and the United States. The era of chain store expansion began in earnest in the early 20th century as retailers recognised the profit potential associated with leveraging a variety of fixed and variable costs across an expanding base of stores whereby the sales volume generated by each additional location produced incremental profits. The superiority of the chain store business model became evident following the Second World War when global consumption surged for all manner of consumer goods. This set off an unprecedented wave of chain store expansion across all types of merchandise classifications. Definitions on the number of units that constitute a chain may vary, but there is no disputing the chain store’s impact on retailing. Chain stores led a dramatic restructuring of the retail industry during the past 100 years and today many of the world’s largest corporations are chain store operations.

Contribution to Retail History

The chain store method of retailing brought about arguably the greatest structural change the industry has seen during the past 100 years. The retail industry today is dominated by those who operate chain stores to effectively serve consumers’ wants and needs in a profitable manner.

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It’s Tuesday so it’s The History Of Retail In 100 Objects post – This weeks object is Galaries du Bois.

Shopping in Paris is just as important as eating, walking, and visiting museums, and the pre-20th Century shopping Malls of Paris are still an attraction for tourists to day. The malls have long iron structured glass roofs, and original features such as marble and black and white tiled floors. They house restaurants, shops and boutiques. The passages were built in the style of a ‘souk’ – a covered area in which to shop, browse and meet friends. The Galeries du Bois au Palais-Royal was built in 1786 and housed 120 luxury boutiques; after shopping there you could pop in to the central gardens that housed the Palais Royal. The Galeries du Bois became the prototype for the other passages of Paris that followed. The upper classes loved these malls. They could shop and meet, away from noise, smells, weather and ‘unsightly riff-raff’. Famous writers and other notables visited them. Balzac and Zola wrote about them in their books. By 1850 Paris had 150 passages, but today just 30 remain. Department stores such as Bon Marché, which opened in 1852, began to replace them.

Contribution to Retail History

The Galeries du Bois form another link in the chain of the history of public shopping ‘centres’, which stretches back to the forums of Ancient Rome. The 18th century Parisian ‘galleries’ share many features with today’s modern malls – a covered, pleasant retail environment where shopping is a social pastime, as well as, a commercial activity.

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It’s Tuesday so it’s The History Of Retail In 100 Objects post – This weeks object is The Royal Exchange

The Royal Exchange in London was established in 1565 by Thomas Gresham to serve as a centre for financial trading, as well as, commerce. The Royal Exchange was a forerunner to the modern shopping mall as Gresham had the vision to dedicate several floors of the structure to retail uses and collect rent from tenants who occupied the space. Thomas Gresham was a wealthy businessman who set out to change the crude financial trading practices that were common in London during the 16th century. Gresham had served as a royal agent for both King Edward VI and Queen Mary and spent time at the bourse in the Belgian city of Antwerp and wanted to bring a similar concept to London. He invested a large portion of his personal wealth to construct a bourse on land provided by the city of London between Cornhill and Threadneedle Street. Queen Elizabeth I officially opened the Royal Exchange in 1571 and the timing could not have been better for several reasons. London’s population was expanding rapidly and the nation’s ascension as a global power had created newfound wealth among residents who were eager to purchase merchandise from retailers who occupied the upper floors of the Royal Exchange. In addition, the Royal Exchange brought London’s financial trading activities up to the standards of continental Europe at a pivotal moment. The completion of the facility five years prior to the Spanish sacking of Antwerp set London on a course to become the financial capital of Europe.The original structure stood for nearly 100 years before it was destroyed by fire in 1666. A rebuilt structure that opened three years later was again destroyed by fire in 1838. The third Royal Exchange building, which still stands today, was reopened in 1844. The financial firms left the Royal Exchange in 1939 and it became a purely retail establishment.

Contribution to Retail History

The Royal Exchange is considered by many to be the world’s first shopping mall. Founder Thomas Gresham established the principle of combining multiple shopkeepers under a single roof to offer a broad range of merchandise categories to create a compelling retail destination.

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It’s Tuesday so it’s The History Of Retail In 100 Objects post – This weeks object is The Ledger

Originally a ledger was the name for a service boo k kept in on e place in a church – “The curates should provide a boo k of the Bible in English, of the largest volume, to be a ledger in the same church for the parishioners to read on .” The actual system of reconciling balances was invented by the famous and successful 15th century Italian banking family: the Medici. They developed the double entry system of tracking credits and debits in a ledger. Their Medici currency was once the most used in Europe, and the principles of their ledger system are still in use today – even if many are now computerised. If you want to total up your financial transactions for the day, week or month, no doubt you will have some kind of ledger to record those ‘takings’ in. On the page in front of you the debits and credits are shown in different columns and there’s a balance when you begin and one when you end. The golden rule is that every debit recorded must have a credit, so that in the grand total when you finish, the debits equal the credits.

Contribution to Retail History

Bookkeeping – or keeping the ledgers – was, and remains, fundamental to a retailer’s ability to track and balance goods in against goods out. The resulting financial metrics produce a clear gauge of how well the business is doing and can be used to evaluate the success of business strategies.

The History Of Retail In 100 Objects Is Available As A Free Podcast